


blue dawn tomorrow

by cocksure



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29300202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocksure/pseuds/cocksure
Summary: Six months after failing to sync with his jaeger and being dismissed from the Officer Academy in Enbarr, Ferdinand is sent to the wall in Sreng. There, he meets Sylvain. Or: the unmaking and making of drift compatibility.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10
Collections: The Three Houses AU Bang





	blue dawn tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written for the 2020 [fe3h au bang](https://twitter.com/FE3HAUBang)! i had the absolute honor and privilege to be paired with ronnie ([ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3RatMoon/)/[twitter](https://twitter.com/3RatMoon1/))— who went above and beyond in capturing this fic in their art! i loved working on this piece, and i hope everyone finds just as much joy in reading it! ♥
> 
> **warnings** these are the main warnings for the story overall, but nothing listed appears in this first chapter. if i've missed anything, and you feel that it needs to be warned for, please let me know! thank you!

**one**

Ferdinand inhales.

 _Inserting entry plug_ , a voice says overhead, stripped of emotions. _Unlocking spinal conductive network. Prepare for connection_. Ferdinand tenses upon these words. The whole process feels clinical, and he counts the seconds, times them with his breaths. In-out, in-out. A pinch at the base of his neck, his crestmark warms, and then the curt voice says: _Probe needle insertion complete_.

A burst of light hits him, then. Not just lights—memories. He cannot grasp their true form as they skip past his eyeline. He avoids looking at them directly, remembers his studies to not chase the rabbit tempting him. _Prime sync established. Psychological corruption values within acceptable range. Maintaining between plus-02 and minus-05_.

Another voice calls for the entry plug to be flooded. The lights still flicker in his peripheral, dancing before him, happy to be brought back to the forefront of his mind. Ferdinand tries to keep his eyes squeezed shut, but the hindbrain always finds a way of slipping past his defenses.

“What do you see over there, darling?”

Ferdinand looks up. Her smile is a beautiful sight. Her hair catches against the glossy sheen on her lips, one hand pressing her sunhat flat to her head, and he remembers it was windy that day. The newscaster called for heavy storms, but Ferdinand had insisted they go to the beach. Eight months shy of ten years old, and his mother promised him. She never broke her promises. They should have left. Ferdinand hates that he made her stay.

“Mother?” he reaches for her, but his arms are heavy. The sand is warm beneath his feet—they’re bare, why are they bare, why can he not reach her— 

_Critical error—_

_Failures in—_

_—rejected—_

_—plug unstable—_

_Abort—_

The sirens begin to blare. It echoes and transforms into a hideous sound. A monster sound. A sound the human brain has taught itself to fear. And there, rising out of the murky waters, the beast roars. Phosphorescent, glowing, leaking a stream of blue from its maw. Ferdinand’s hands reach, and they are the short, skinny arms of a nine-year-old. Eight months shy of ten years, and still not enough. _Never enough_ , says his father, and he wasn’t there but Ferdinand _was_ and why couldn’t he have been enough to save her. His voice is his own but not the one he knows as he calls for his mother to grab his hand.

“Please,” he begs, wet with seaspray and tears. He’s weak against the flood of the water. She smiles at him. His fingers stretch. They do not connect. Everything washes away in blue.

 _Auto-eject has activated. Sync rates at minimum. Pilot is unstable. Test concluded_.

_

Six months later finds him on a longliner, traveling to the rig north of Sreng, during the Red Wolf Moon rotation.

Winter has firmly planted her claws into the northern lands, dug them in until everything feels lifeless and cold and like nothing all at once. Ferdinand tucks his nose into the scarf around his neck. It does little to keep him warm, but it serves the purpose of shielding his nose and cheeks from the graze of the winds.

Icebergs line their path on either side, mobbing them, swaying like the buoys in the ocean of his memories. They’re tinged blue—eerie, phosphorescent. The contaminants have spidered their way into the ice and taken root here. The little veiny paths hum with an electricity, that incredible blue pulsing like it’s alive. This is kaiju territory now, it screams in warning; there’s nothing here for you anymore.

The Llyrian Sea, once famous for its Srengi Haddock and diverse marinelife, is now just another arctic wasteland. And this vessel’s only purpose is to ferry new laborers out on a one-way ticket. The stench of fish guts linger, never having quite been scrubbed from the shipwork.

There’s already a crowd gathered on the rig in the distance. The Northern Anti-Kaiju Wall rises behind it, an imposing vision, gray and unyielding against the horizon. The guides speak at length about the history of the wall, of this specific rig in the middle of the frostbitten ocean. They say their time will vary as they begin to work on the wall in earnest. They’re the new recruits, but—when Ferdinand looks around at the others, mostly a mix of Srengi and Kleimanian and criminals, he feels all at once like he has been displaced.

“Listen up, you sorry saps,” says the foreman, leading them up the landing strip. Ferdinand bumps into a fellow laborer, muttering apologies around her. “This beauty is the Nuada Sector of our very own Anti-Kaiju Wall. You better familiarize yourselves with her because this is your home for the next six months. For some of you, maybe the rest of your lives.”

The foreman is a large man, accent distinct and vowels heavy. The hair on his head is not so much receding as it’s in full retreat down the back of his head. The watery, pale sunlight makes him look like he’s perpetually sweating. He taps his clipboard, flipping through the pages, similar to a businessman checking through his inventory, before he hands it off to one of the men in suits who led them all here.

The foreman wets his lips with his tongue. The skin splinters and cracks when he smirks at them. “Alrights, gonna arrange you sorry fuckers into shifts. No changes allowed. You better make nice with all your co-workers. You’re going to be seeing a lot of them for the foreseeable future.”

The motley crew of laborers from the longliner shuffle into a line. Ferdinand keeps his gaze forward and ignores the creeping dread, inching up from his feet to his stomach just like the contamination on the icebergs. Every so often, he can feel the shift of a wave hit against the rig, but it holds firm. Nuada’s Wall rises up ahead, and he can make out the highlight of orange armbands signalling the workers on this shift. They decorate it like flowers, cascading from the top to the bottom. It looks like a cemetery, like the remains of Hrym decorating Fodlan’s southernmost region, and Ferdinand’s lunch elevates and settles into the base of his throat.

He looks down from it, and he meets the eyes of another laborer across the way. His eyes are brown, but there is something almost unnatural, unreal about them. He says something to the group of people he is with, turning away on a laugh. Ferdinand keeps his attention, though.

“Oi, kid,” shouts the foreman, and Ferdinand startles when he feels the foreman’s breath against his face. It smells fishier than the longliner. Ferdinand swallows; he tries not to breathe in fear of losing his lunch and inflicting more ire from this intimidating man. The foreman slaps an orange armband against his chest. “You’re with B-shift, so get outta here.”

Ferdinand frowns, and then, before he can do more than turn his body in the direction the foreman points, the man with unnatural eyes appears before him.

They stop, and look at each other, equally intrigued.

His brows furrow, and he opens his mouth as though to speak, before another body crashes into him.

“Would ya look at him.” The newcomer whistles, eyes bright, and happiness radiating off him like heat. His teeth flash between the thick curls of his beard. “Gave us a pretty one this time.” He nods, appreciative. “Name’s Pearse; charmed, I reckon.”

A scrap of a boy elbows his way between them. “Ignore him,” he says, and Pearse mutters around him, rubbing at his side. “You’re new, aren’t you? I saw you step off the boat.” He wrinkles his nose, then. “You smell like it at least, but—don’t you worry! We’ll show you where the communal showers are.”

Ferdinand nods slowly. The smile on his face strains, cheeks aching, and now he can’t stop smelling the leftover stench of fish guts on himself. He once prided himself on first impressions, but that was when he was an Aegir, a trainee pilot at Enbarr’s Officer Academy, a candidate for Adrestia’s Anti-Kaiju Force. Now, what is he? _Nothing_ , provides his father’s voice, the last thing he had said to Ferdinand that day, on the bridge, before sending him away to Uncle Bergliez’s home.

Another voice joins the fray, gentler and warmer, and Ferdinand glances up up up at this towering man. “Forgive them,” he says, apologetic, as though he had been the one to make these slights against Ferdinand. “Pearse and Ashe are—easily excitable. I am Dedue, and you are?”

He catches the eye of the first man again. He has his arms tucked into his laborer jumpsuit, eyes assessing and bright despite the pale sunlight. He offers no words as he hangs back, behind the others who crowd Ferdinand. He almost seems uninterested if not for the way he sizes Ferdinand up. Ferdinand straightens beneath that probing look.

To Dedue, he takes hold of his gloved hand, pulling out his biggest and brightest smile, and says: “I am Ferdinand. Ferdinand von—”

A hand claps down onto his shoulder, tight. “Guys, mind if I give the rookie a tour? Show him all the best spots on dear ol’ Nuada?”

Pearse snorts. “Already making your move, Sylvain?” He winks. The crow’s feet around his eyes crinkle with the movement. “You’ve always liked breaking ‘em in.”

Sylvain, with his unnaturally bright eyes and hair, waves him away with a laugh. “Nah, you know I never flirt with shiftmates—bad for business. But,” and he flicks his eyes back at Ferdinand, mouth thinning from that smooth grin. He moves his hand from his shoulder to grip the back of Ferdinand’s neck, palm against the burning crestmark beneath his clothing. Ferdinand wonders if he can feel its heat through their layers of clothing. “I make no promises.”

Pearse’s laugh is a full-bodied thing, loud and impressive. Dedue shakes his head and ushers Ashe with him, already discussing the meal in the mess hall and ways of improving what they’ll find. The people on the rig disperse. The foreman’s shouting has concluded for the day. The new recruits Ferdinand shared a vessel with, having left, shuffle into their new groups and home. Distantly, he hears the sound of laborers on the wall, the sharp chime of tools hammering and soldering against metal, and the slap of waves beneath them. Sylvain drops his hand from Ferdinand and tilts his head, a gesture to follow after him, as he walks further inward.

Snow crunches beneath his feet. In Southern Adrestia, it never snows. He hardly finds the energy to enjoy this, knowing that it, too, like all else, is most likely contaminated by the kaiju.

All pretenses of a smile melt from Sylvain’s lips. He digs out a lighter and cigarette from inside his coveralls, settles against the wall behind him. “You’re a pilot, huh,” he says. He doesn’t even look at Ferdinand. “Aegir—from Adrestia.”

“I left.”

Sylvain cuts his eyes to Ferdinand. “Left? Or were you dismissed?” He takes a pull from his cigarette. “Good boys don’t find themselves on the Nuada. So, what did you do?”

Ferdinand frowns. He owes this stranger nothing. “I found my skills were better suited elsewhere.” He tugs on the fabric of his overalls. “That is all.”

“Bullshit,” Sylvain cuts in. He laughs, but it isn’t in the least bit pleasant. It sounds almost bitter to Ferdinand’s ears, and smells in much the same fashion when Sylvain breathes out smoke. He wrinkles his nose against the bitter scent, no longer trying to make a nice impression on the man before him. “You Adrestians are a proud bunch. You don’t give up all that fame and glory to work up here in this forgotten wasteland.”

“You do not know me.”

Sylvain pushes off the wall. What’s left of a flyer tears away with the movement. “Maybe not,” and he shrugs, like he couldn't care less about Ferdinand, and he probably doesn’t. “But I know your type.” He pauses. His brows pinch in the middle. Their eyes meet again, and even though Ferdinand shifts under the weight of that stare, he won’t back down. Sylvain sighs, and he tosses the cigarette down into the muddy snow. “Just don’t go shouting who you are to the others. They’ll take it a lot worse than me.”

Sylvain walks off, bumping against Ferdinand’s shoulder, and leaves him alone.

The flyer, weathered and destroyed, catches his eye where it rests in one of Sylvain’s slushy bootprints.

 _Defending Your Future!_ it reads, _Continental Anti-Kaiju Wall Completion By_ and here someone has written in black ink _**NEVER**_. Ferdinand crouches down and picks it up.

“Defending your future,” he says, and that proud, angry piece of him quiets down. Tears prick his eyes, and it’s cold—so cold. There is no warmth here, and his mother is long gone. Maybe Sylvain is right. There is no Ferdinand von Aegir anymore; his father made that clear on the bridge, staring down at the pathetic heap he once called a son, as the other pilots completed their test runs successfully.

Ferdinand scrubs his eyes with the back of his hand. The gloves are rough, scratchy, and it stings his already wind-chapped skin. He takes a deep breath.

He exhales.

—

In the beginning, finding people to work on the Wall had been relatively easy. People need food, people need work, and the Wall presented itself as a means to have both. Besides, for the average person out there, those without crests and those disinterested in Kaiju-science, the Wall was the only way to make a place for yourself in this new world. The pilots, the scientists, and the laborers—the lives of so many depended on the relationship of these three groups. They were needed to stop every kaiju that neared the continental shelf, even though the only ones who’d ever lay their eyes on a kaiju and live to tell the tale were the pilots.

And, for a time, this was all fine.

But then—as years went by, the support waned. Why work on the Wall when it would never be completed. Each brush with a kaiju made repairs halt, created death, and kept the project from moving forward. Meanwhile, the pilots managed to keep more kaiju at bay than any of the Walls ever had. The shift in dynamics caused tension and disparity among the groups. No one deemed the laborers real workers against the cause anymore.

Adrestia started construction on their very own Anti-Kaiju Wall when Ferdinand turned ten. Eight months too late. Hrym was a distant memory, stained electric blue and devoid of any life. The Wall in Kleiman began three years later, after the much-reported Tragedy of Duscur. Two city-cemeteries, countless lives lost, and finally Fodlan woke up to the reality they were living. Still, though, it all looked like rubble, and on top of people’s memorials and broken homes, they started to build the first Continental Anti-Kaiju Walls from the material left behind.

And Ferdinand remembers, sitting at the long dinner table, before the Accident in Hrym, his father saying, “It’s a punishment from the Goddess,” about the news of Morfis closing off. They had all but disappeared from the map by the time Ferdinand entered the Officer Academy. But so had all the other island nations— Brigid, Albinea, and the cluster of islands known as the Nereides to the southeast of Hrym. No news crossed the seas any longer. The only communication Fodlan had with the world resided in shaky relations with Almyra to the east of Leicester.

“Of course, dear,” his mother had said, pouring him more wine, and winked at Ferdinand.

Years later, the Goddess must have turned her wrath upon them, too. But they were far from prepared, having not learned from the mistakes of their peers in Morfis or Dagda. A decade from the millennial celebration of Seiros destroying the first kaiju known to history, Nemesis, and the kaiju had returned to sink their teeth back into them. Jomungand in Hrym had been just one of many beasts to spring up over the years.

“So here we are, building a Wall that will never be completed against a threat that will never be defeated,” Pearse says into his cup of cider.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ashe rushes in to say. He sets his jaw, glares at Pearse from across the table. “We’re getting closer everyday.”

Pearse sneers. “To what, mate? Them demonic beasts being—” he clicks his tongue, draws a line across his throat with his thumb, “or, us finishing that damned wall?” He looks to the ceiling, shakes his head, scowl still in place. “Nah, believe we’re just getting closer to our own deaths at this rate.”

“We know,” their other lunchmate—a fair-haired boy no older than him, a C-shift supplier named Finin— says immediately. His temperament runs much calmer than the other two at the table, and Ferdinand imagines he’s played mediator more often than not between them. His immediate acquiescence does little to soothe this time, though.

Ashe huffs and Pearse twists his body around to face him. “What are your thoughts on this, Rookie?”

Sylvain, in a discussion with Dedue at the other end of the table, glances his way.

Ferdinand straightens his spine. The throb in his crestmark has dimmed little since the encounter with Sylvain earlier. He also suspects it has to do with the quick scrub he’d managed in the communal showers before the C-shift rotation came stumbling in before lunch. The filtered water on the Nuada is much different than what he’s grown accustomed to in Enbarr.

“It is just until the scientists locate the breach,” he says, but the more he speaks the more cowed he becomes. All eyes at the table are on him now.

Pearse gets this look in his eye again, and even Ferdinand—having known him for a little less than half an evening—knows that he is gearing up to fight again. But then, Pearse deflates into a laugh. Not the full-bodied one from earlier, but no less amused.

“Looks like the rookie’s still a bit wet behind his ears,” he says. He claps Ferdinand on the back once twice and the third time stings a bit. Ferdinand coughs, and he hears Sylvain chuckle down the length of the table. He ignores him. “You’re almost as bad as Ashe over there.”

Ashe heats up at that comment, grumbling, “I’m not _that_ bad.” There’s a hint of pink to his cheeks, fading out his freckles, and Ferdinand is certain his own face is fit to match. Being here, among all of these laborers, has him feeling more and more displaced as the day goes on. Still, he cannot help to ask:

“Why?”

Finin smiles at him. He tilts his head to move his bangs from his eyes. “It’s been almost a millennium. If there’s a breach, we all believe they’d have found it by now.”

Afterward, the tension eases back into something more good-natured. A steady pulse of conversation flows around him, and he sinks back into the Sreng-fashioned ration before him. Most of their livelihood died with the kaiju-blue contamination, so the meals they have allotted are puffin and dried out fruits imported from the border near Itha.

Ferdinand may have grown up among the elite—wine, game, and an orchard of apples as far as the eye could see—but he is eight years and a failed piloting test away from that boy.

—

“I feel like we did not properly meet earlier,” Dedue says, later, as they make their way to the tram leading to the laborer barracks. “I am Dedue Molinaro.”

He sticks his hand out across the empty space between them. His identity chip is twisted around his wrist like a bracelet, tarnished silver against the brown of his skin and the black of his tattoos. Ferdinand recognizes them as words, but he does not know their meaning.

Ferdinand takes his hand again, feeling more at ease than he was earlier that morning. “Pleased to meet you,” he says, and going on instinct alone, he guesses: “You were from Duscur originally? I admit I am not well-versed in the language, but I noticed your, ah, decorations.” He taps his own wrist at his words.

Dedue flashes him a grin, small but kind. “You are correct. I was once a man of Duscur, but—” He pauses to look at his own wrist, searching for answers in those words that Ferdinand doesn’t know. “It has been a long time since Duscur existed.” He shifts in his seat, but the movement is subtle so as to not disturb Ashe who dozes at his side. “I am afraid I cannot place your accent, however. I apologize that I am not as worldly as you.”

“Oh, that is quite alright,” Ferdinand says, happy to have someone to speak with. Having sat among the others earlier had felt nice, but there was not much opportunity to befriend and grow acquainted with everyone before Ashe and Pearse’s argument started. Dedue appears to be attentive in a way Ferdinand is not accustomed to. Even in Adrestia, at the Officer Academy, his peers seemed politely disinterested at best, disregarding at worst, and he found himself lonely among the other hopefuls.

He wants to open up to Dedue. But—a glance to his left and Sylvain sits against the window, chin propped in hand as he gazes out at the half-finished work on the Wall’s leftmost sector. The lights from the wall blink in and out, highlighting the sharp contour of his cheek. Ferdinand swallows back his words, redirects them into something harder to stomach but easier for others to accept.

“Hrym,” he answers softly, toying with the chain around his neck. It just reads _Ferdie_ , the girl at the service desk all smiles as she ignored him, stamping his name into his identification records. “It has been a long time, now. You would not find it on any maps nowadays, and even less in history books.”

“I apologize,” Dedue says, oddly genuine in the face of Ferdinand’s lie. He reaches across once more to place a hand to Ferdinand’s knee. “Our people—” he bows his head. “I grieve with you.”

It suddenly doesn’t feel like a lie anymore under the weight of Dedue’s words and hands. Because Ferdinand truly did lose everything that day on the beach, nine-going-on-ten, reaching and reaching and never connecting, as she sank beneath the rising waters. Before everything became blue.

Ferdinand wraps his hand over Dedue’s. He repeats the words.

“I grieve with you.”

—

They share a room—all six of them.

“Lucky bastard,” Pearse says about the former roommate, the one whose bunk Ferdinand now inhabits. Apparently he was a serious-faced man, somewhere in his thirties, who’d saved his earnings and found himself no longer wanting to be a part of the construction in Nuada.

Sylvain tosses his legs onto the railing of his bed. “Could’ve gone with him, man. Nothing’s keeping you here.”

“Aye, but then I’d miss your ugly mug too much.”

Sylvain raises a finger in a decidedly rude gesture, but he grins, sharp and wide while doing so. Ferdinand settles his limited items on the bunk he shares with Ashe. No one seems ready to retire just yet, but Ferdinand has little else to do. He straightens the coverlet, tests the pillow— and it feels like a rock beneath his hands, hard and lumpy as it is, with little give despite how he pulls at it.

“How about you, Ferdinand?” Ashe asks, and he realizes he hasn’t been paying attention to the question. He hums in response, giving up on the pillow for the moment, and Ashe repeats the question: “How long will you be here?”

“Ah, well,” he cannot say _until I go back home_ because even with his lie, he doesn’t have a home to go back to. His father made that clear when he was shipping him off. He furrows his brow. “I suppose when my work is done?”

Pearse laughs. “We already told ya, boy. We’re fucked before the Nuada finishes.” He sobers up, laughter petering off. “Some of us are lifers—Wall or no Wall.”

“You mean you cannot leave?”

Pearse shrugs. “I’m here for the money, but not all of us are so lucky.”

Finin raises his hand. “Filling in for my dad, ya know? Gotta take care of ma and Cara. Money’s good.” He shrugs, but the frown doesn’t smooth from his lips nor his forehead. “Can’t do much else for them, and this is steady work, yeah?”

When he glances toward Ashe, he has his head down. He pulls at the pilling material of his sleep pants, cotton gone threadbare. “I have a debt to pay,” is all he says, and the others make no comment, clearly aware of his circumstances.

And he knows why Dedue cannot leave. It’s the same reason Ferdinand will stay and wait. But that leaves— 

“Mr. Leader over there reckons if he stays long enough, they’ll make him the new Mr. Foreman,” Pearse says.

Sylvain shoots a finger gun gesture their way. He cracks one eye open to look down on all of them from his bunk above Dedue. “You lot are right about that. Gonna work your sorry asses to the bone.” Ferdinand looks up from where he unpacks his clothes, finds Sylvain looking straight at him again. His eyes are bright even in the dim light provided by the bedside lamps. Heat rises from Ferdinand’s crestmark, around his chest, and up his neck. Sylvain’s lips curl into something more satisfied, the cut of it dangerous and teasing. “May have to work some of you harder than others.”

Pearse rolls his eyes. “Oi, quit flirting with the rookie, Mr. Leader—least not in front of us lonely folk.”

Finin’s laugh sounds from beneath a pile of quilts. They look to be handmade, some of the stitches amateur, but others elaborate. Ferdinand suspects they’re gifts from home. Finin seems to be the only one with any belongings taking up space, from his quilts to the pictures pinned to the wall. And—his heart aches for it, the comfort of home, a warm kiss to his forehead, a meal made up of more than dried fruit and tasteless meats.

“Speak for yourself, Pea,” Finin says, muffled under his quilted mound. “‘M not lonely at all. Got a date with Alys from A-shift in the morning.”

“Look who’s finally grown some balls, lads,” Pearse says. “Our Finny’s all grown up and making us proud.”

A voice calls from outside their barracks: “lights out in fifteen,” and the mood in the air shifts into something quieter, warmer, sleepier. Ferdinand crawls beneath his single, issued sheet. It doesn’t cover his toes, and it smells sterile, stale. He curls into a ball on the thin mattress, less to keep warmth in and more to combat the rush of homesickness he feels. It’s only grown stronger in the last six months.

The lights overhead flicker out, and then, soon, the lamps by the bedsides are let out one by one.

“Read another chapter for us, Dedue?” Ashe asks into the still of the night.

Ferdinand brings his knees to his face, nose cold and running, eyes prickling from more than just the cold of the night air. The sound of the dead sea filters in through the vents and windows. Up this far north, in the heart of kaiju territory, no wildlife dare pierce through the still of the night. It’s lonelier here than anywhere Ferdinand’s ever felt, but— 

Dedue begins to read, voice nothing louder than a gentle murmur, and— 

Sleep comes to Ferdinand easy under his blanket. He falls asleep to tales of chivalry, and the knights of yore chase away his nightmares for a while.

—

He dreams of her that night. Not of the blue blue so much blue that swept her away. Not of the demonic beast that rose from the murky depths, screaming in agony, destroying everything he has ever known and loved. No, just her and her dress and her big sunhat and the beach that was taken from them.

His mother was beautiful. At nine, he knew she was the prettiest woman in all of Adrestia. No matter the women his father courted after her death, no one could ever replace her. He begrudges his father for even trying the foolish act.

In his dreams, she stands on the beach. Her dress billowing, white, against the tan of her legs. She keeps one hand raised, settled delicately on her hat, and the other she reaches out toward him. Her hair whips around her face—curled and wild and the color of fresh oranges—the ones from Brigid, citrusy and sticky and larger than his face. She smiles at him, lacing their fingers together, and says, “my sweet boy,” as though there is nothing else he could be. Not useless or worthless or pathetic—just her sweet boy.

Colors streak the horizon with the hint of sunset, and he stands beside her with his feet in the sand. Clear water, not even a hint of that living blue, laps at the shoreline. It’s perfect, and it’s not real, but Ferdinand cannot bring himself to blink awake from this.

“What do you see over there, darling?” she asks, the words still an echo in his mind, a knife to his heart.

He swallows around that wound, and turns toward the sea. Before them, the Nuada Wall waits, an impenetrable force against the winds pressing against it. The laborers bloom from its seams, a lively crop of autumnal colors—red and orange and yellow bands—top to bottom. Just like the flowers in his mother’s garden.

“It’s lovely,” she says in the way she’d talk about his drawings of unicorns and puppies. Her smile stills across her face, plastered there like fresh paint, and she keeps looking out into the distance. “But—you don’t belong here, darling.”

“What?”

The warm sand erupts into flowers, ones that stretch and stretch and stretch, and the city behind them topples into ruin. He loses grip on her hand, and she doesn’t even notice as the Wall breaks, the laborers’ colors fading and falling into the sea. And then—that sound, that sound that lingers in his memories and chases after him in the dead of night—erupts in the distance. The flowers and waves take him under, smelling stale and sterile and drowning him. He can’t fight against it—the sound won’t stop—she’s dying—he can’t reach her—he can’t even see her anymore—the blue pushes him under—

—

He sits up, heart pounding. The harrowing sound continues ringing, ear-splitting and dissonant. The others grumble in the room, and his nightmare peels from his vision. He is safe. He is alive. The room is awash in a faint blue-tint. Ashe sleepily sniffles beneath his bed, and there is Pearse, and there rests Finin in his quilted safety. Dedue rolls over in his sleep, and his chest rises and falls with his breaths. He cuts his eyes upward and finds two, bright, kaiju-blue eyes staring back at him.

He gasps, slamming his back against the wall. The eyes blink, then they close. The faint light goes away with them.

“Rain warning,” Sylvain says. His accent is thicker with sleep, distinctly Northern Faerghan. He keeps his eyes closed. “A-shift is coming back, but we’ll be delayed until the rain stops. Go back to sleep, Rookie.” Sylvain shifts, and Ferdinand’s vision adjusts enough in the dark to see him roll over and face the wall, signaling the end of their conversation.

Ferdinand exhales on a shaky breath, and although the fear has lessened in his chest, sleep does not come back for him.

He stays awake until the rain stops.

**Author's Note:**

> **special thanks** to **ronnie** : thank you for being the best artist i could have ever hoped for! you were such an inspiration and huge motivation for completing this fic. i hope that i can live up to your art in even the smallest of ways. to the **h5** : thanks for being my biggest cheerleaders throughout this endeavor! i love you all to pieces even if i rarely express it ♥ i am forever grateful that i have all of you for kicking my butt when i was lazy or discouraged. especially **hill** & **fresh** : your praise and enthusiasm meant more than you'll ever know. to **space mom** : thanks for reading through it last minute & tidying up the draft! all mistakes are my own; all the best parts are yours, lol. to **nat** : thanks for believing in me enough to encourage me to sign up in the first place ♥ to the mods: thank you all so much for being our guiding lights & for arranging this event! i've had an absolute blast. and finally, to you: thank you for giving this a chance! i appreciate it so much.


End file.
